COTS finalists are supposed to be announced in a couple hours.

Clark Lindsey has an overview of the program, and links (including one to the webcast of the announcement, which will occur at 4 PM Eastern).

[Update shortly after begin of announcement]

Just said that two have been selected. So we know they're not going to be spreading money thin.

Well, that didn't take long. SpaceX and RpK.

That means two (partially) reusable vehicle companies.

[Update a minutes later]

Well, I see via comments that I didn't have to liveblog it. An army of reporters!

Step right up folks, place your bets.
My bet: SpaceX, SpaceHab
My hope: SpaceX, RpK

My bet: SpaceX and somebody else.
My hope: SpaceX for cargo and t/space for crew (primarily).

I'm betting on PlanetSpace and Interorbital!

More seriously, I agree with Clark's bet on SpaceX and Rocketplane-Kistler.

It's SpaceX and Rocketplane-Kistler!

SPACEX AND RPK!!!

Congrats to SpaceX and RP-K. Now, time to get to work.

I'm still wondering though: Why was this announcement made right before the weekend? As far as I can tell, there wasn't any bad news involved.

(shrug) Some things really do happen to fall on Friday. This could've ben one of them...

> I'm still wondering though: Why was this announcement made right
> before the weekend? As far as I can tell, there wasn't any bad news involved.

The bad news came out earlier this week: Griffin killed the two microlanders Ames wanted to do, at Marshall's request. Announcing COTS this week ensures the space press will focus on that instead of another slap at Ames.

Actually, according to space news, the Ames micro probes are not killed, just postponed until after the medium lander in 2011.

Stock Market

Space Hab's share price has varied 32 cents today, thats 31% of its market cap. It is down by 18% in after hours trading.

That is why you do this at that time of day so that at least the folks who just stay in the regular market don't dump the stock. Rationality will return next week.

Dennis

Listen to Dennis, he has it right.

Weird because the people that designed the K-1 rocket are at Andrews Space and Technology now. It does not make sense. The people at RPK have turned over a dozen times.

It's easy, Tony. Those are the two companies that have actual physical hardware. It's the path of least resistance, and most conservative bet as far as NASA is concerned.

Now it's time for them to perform.

Check this link.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/060818/1334069.html?.v=1

Interesting bizjournal article.

Dennis

What was it you found interesting about it, Dennis, other than that it reported that two Houston contractors (one of them a Johnny Come Lately) lost?

Rand

The interesting part is that there was an article in biz journal about two of the losers, Andrews and Spacehab. Why not say something about Spacedev which is a public company? I just looked and both companies (spdv.ob and spab) lost major share value in the last few minutes of trading and it is quite clear that the share value had been pumped up somewhat on both companies as a result of the anticipation of the COTS award. Why mention Andrews, a small private company in Seattle? The omissions and commissions in the article are very interesting.

Now SPAB is in better shape as they are on the SpaceX team but it remains to be seen what their role there is.

It is also interesting to see what will happen with the four companies that did not win the funding. Clark took a stab at it but it will interesting to see what happens now. Will t/space survive? What is going to happen at Spacehab with the end of the Shuttle era in sight which is the vast majority of their business?

Interesting times.

Dennis

"What is going to happen at Spacehab with the end of the Shuttle era in sight which is the vast majority of their business?"

They're too corporatized to be on the leading edge of Newspace through their own initiative, and COTS was their last shot at becoming a titan in the field. I'd guess they'll end up going for contracts with the COTS winners, Virgin, Bigelow, or maybe Blue Origin if that ever gets off the ground, designing standardized life support elements as per their expertise. And if that doesn't happen, they would probably be forced to sell out to one of those firms.

I thought they'd be picked because of their tight relationship with NASA, tried and true hardware competence, and agreement with Lockheed minimizing some of RpK's advantages, but I guess their entrepreneurial credentials just weren't there. Kudos to Griffin on making the best decision. If this COTS concept proves out, NASA may very well become a gigantic space business-generating machine rather than a corporate welfare umbilical cord for military contractors. Off we go, into the wild black yonder...

Brian

This is one thing that we are in complete agreement on.

Dennis

> Why mention Andrews, a small private company in Seattle? The omissions and commissions in the article are very interesting.

The article says Andrews recently opened an office in Houston. So, it's reasonable that a Houston Business Journal reporter would mention them and not SpaceDev, which does not have an office in their "beat."

Oh, need to make a possible correction: Alan Boyle at MSNBC doesn't list Lockheed as a SpaceHab partner, so I may have been wrong about that. I'd read somewhere that Lockheed had made deals with three of the finalists, SpaceHab among them, but that information may have been incorrect.

Lockheed was SPAB's launch provider. But COTS is all about developing new launch vehicles.

Finally, it is amusing that Rocketplane hired Orbital to build a design by the original Kistler team, most of which are retired.

It will indeed be fun to watch.

"Lockheed was SPAB's launch provider. But COTS is all about developing new launch vehicles."

Good point. Even though SpaceHab was proposing a new orbital vehicle, I guess NASA wanted there to also be progress on launch capabilities. And SPAB's attitude toward the sacred cow of Newspace, private manned flights, is chillingly indifferent. Their website basically touts Apex as a cargo container, and acknowledges almost as an afterthought that it could be used for space tourism--"if you're so tasteless," it seems to say. Fortunately we have Mike Griffin at the helm, who's less impressed with corporate obtuseness than his predecessor would have been.

On the other hand, wouldn't it have made some sense from a commerce-generating standpoint to give them COTS money for the Apex vehicle? If Dragon is dedicated to Falcon 9 (???), and K-1 is apparently a completely integrated system, it could be a good idea to have a platform-independent orbiter.

Why exactly couldn't a Dragon go on an Atlas V? And what would stop you putting a larger service module on that Atlas V with an extra 1600m/s dV?

"Why exactly couldn't a Dragon go on an Atlas V?"

It wouldn't surprise me, but Dragon will surely be optimized for Falcon 9 with platform adaptability being a low priority. Apex was envisioned from the beginning as a platform-independent orbiter, so it might allow for more frequent launches in addition to Dragon and K-1. And if Dragon doesn't work out, the Falcon 9 wouldn't be a total loss to the COTS program if another orbiter could use it.